Apache Kafka Kafka Topics & Partitions

Question 1

What is the purpose of the replication factor in a Kafka topic?

Accepted Answer

It defines how many copies of each partition exist across brokers for fault tolerance

Answer

It controls the number of partitions

Answer

It sets the maximum message size

Answer

It determines compression type

Question 2

Which Kafka CLI tool is used to create a new topic?

Accepted Answer

kafka-topics.sh

Answer

kafka-console-producer.sh

Answer

kafka-configs.sh

Answer

kafka-log-dirs.sh

Question 3

What determines which partition a keyed message is written to?

Accepted Answer

hash(key) % number_of_partitions

Answer

Round-robin based on timestamp

Answer

Producer ID modulo partition count

Answer

Key length modulo partition count

Question 4

What is the minimum in-sync replicas (min.insync.replicas) setting used for?

Accepted Answer

Defines the minimum number of replicas that must acknowledge a write when acks=all

Answer

Sets the minimum partition count

Answer

Controls leader election timeout

Answer

Limits the replication factor

Question 5

Can you decrease the number of partitions in an existing Kafka topic?

Accepted Answer

No, partition count can only be increased, never decreased

Answer

Yes, using kafka-topics.sh --alter

Answer

Yes, but only if replication factor is 1

Answer

Yes, by temporarily disabling the topic

Question 6

What is a Kafka topic's 'retention.ms' configuration?

Accepted Answer

The time period for which Kafka retains messages before deleting them

Answer

Maximum size before a segment is closed

Answer

Time to wait before a compacted key is removed

Answer

Consumer group session window